1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ink jet is a process of color image recording. The ink jet technique has been used in the field of office printers and home-use printers. In recent years, the ink jet technique has been applied in the field of industrial printing.
In particular, the need for high-speed printing is growing in recent years. When ink jet recording is carried out using a high-speed printing system such as a single pass system, high quality images are formed at a low cost through the use of, for example, a recording medium disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2009-125948. The recording medium will not cause bronzing or mixing of colors while preventing curling, cockling, and paper deformation.
On the other hand, in order to give good abrasion resistance to inks containing pigments, for example, JP-A No. 2001-323194 discloses a method for applying an ink jet ink containing a coloring material and a photocurable monomer to a recording medium having a porous ink image-receiving layer.
In the ink described in JP-A No. 2009-125948 which contains a pigment and polymer particles, the polymer particles work as a binder to improve fixability and water resistance to some extent. However, since the fixability depends on the thermal properties of the polymer, it may be insufficiently improved, particularly conspicuously in high-speed recording. In such cases, the softening point of the polymer is decreased thereby accelerating the fixation to some extent, but also causes the deterioration of the adhesiveness of the image in a high temperature environment, and thus hinders the achievement of these performances.
The method described in JP-A No. 2001-323194 causes coalescence of ink droplets (spotting interference) during high-speed printing, and is not suitable for high-speed recording.
The invention has been accomplished in view of the above problems, and is intended to provide an image forming method which allows the formation of high definition images having good adhesiveness to the recording medium and good drawing properties, even in high-speed recording.